Eastern North Carolina AIDS rates top the state, with Jones County at No. 1 and Lenoir County at No. 3. Greene County comes in tied at No. 9 with Nash County.

The statistics, part of the 2011 HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report by the state Division of Public Health, show the latest picture on sexually-transmitted diseases in North Carolina.

Unfortunately, it’s nothing new.

The Charlotte Observer quoted UNC Charlotte medical geographer Gerald Pyle in 1994 saying, “The largest number of (AIDS) cases are still in metropolitan areas, but the rates are getting higher and higher in some of the poor, rural counties.”

A dozen years later, the threat continued to loom.

“We are right in the middle of an epidemic of HIV and AIDS, and I don’t know how many people think about that or know it,” Dr. Thomas Kerkering said at ECU in 2006, quoted in university publication Pieces of Eight.

If there is a silver lining, diagnosed AIDS cases dropped significantly in Lenoir and Jones counties in 2011, from 2010.

“It’s certainly encouraging to see, for example, the two (cases) in 2011, compared to the previous years,” Lenoir County Health Department Director Joey Huff said. “We’ve always had that unfortunate distinction of being a higher-rate county when it comes to HIV infection and also AIDS, and some of the other STDs as well.”

Lenoir County had 15 diagnosed AIDS cases in 2009 and 11 in 2010. Over the three-year period, state statisticians calculated the county has 22.5 AIDS cases per 100,000 people. Jones County, which had three cases in 2009 and 2010, and one in 2011, has a rate of 29.7 cases per 100,000 people, because of the county’s much smaller population.

Should people engage in risky behavior, there are methods in place for free testing.

“In North Carolina, we have an excellent testing program, where anybody can go to a health department anywhere in North Carolina and be tested for HIV anonymously and free,” Huff said.

Huff explained that counselors are on hand to instruct people how to reduce their chances of contracting HIV, if they test negative, and how to not spread the disease, should they test positive for HIV or AIDS.

There are a variety of drugs used to manage the disease and allow a person to live longer than otherwise possible, but income and availability of health care can be barriers to people seeking help.

“Unfortunately we don’t have any providers that provide that service locally,” Huff said. “People who come to us, when they find out they’re HIV positive, we refer them to the infectious disease clinic in Greenville.”

Messages left with Jones County Interim Health Director Howard Surface and with the state Division of Public Health were not returned as of press time.

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Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 or wes.wolfe@kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.